A magnetic personality doesn't necessarily indicate a good heart.
Laura Linney
I crave a cone of silence every once in while.
What people can survive and what they don't survive is shocking to me. Someone can go to Iraq and be blown to bits and survive. Someone can trip and fall on the street and they die - that's that.
I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side.
It is always good to explore the stuff you don't agree with, to try and understand a different lifestyle or foreign worldview. I like to be challenged in that way, and always end up learning something I didn't know.
Some people's personalities are so compelling that they command attention.
Tanning is tricky, because a lot of people just look orange.
My parents were divorced and I would spend weekends with my father.
People can't really place me. They're not really sure who I am. Sometimes they think I'm Helen Hunt. Sometimes they think I'm Laura Dern.
Working with special needs children is hard.
Fear, anxiety and neurosis: that's just in the suitcase when you're an actor.
You can watch someone on-stage cry and cry - but in the audience you feel nothing. It's easy to become indulgent. For me, what's important is the story first.
I don't want to spend my life in my 40s feeling bad about being in my 40s, and then all of a sudden I'm 50, and I will have missed a whole decade!
Just because you're not famous, doesn't mean you're not good.
I've always thought that I'm sexy in my own right, but not in a way that people thought was bankable.
The entertainment industry is terrified of silence.
I can scarcely stand to have a manicure. I have to have them because you don't want to look like a disgusting human being - it's self-care and it has to happen, but I get very restless.
Cancer is so much bigger than a TV show.
When your life is being threatened there's an instinctive urge to fight. You fight for the time you have, for your relationships.
The good thing is that I'm always honest.
Doing the right thing has power.
I just want to say, 'Go work! It doesn't matter what it is. Work begets work. Just go!'
I'm very hard on my bags because I tend to carry a lot of stuff with me.
I'm lucky because I don't like being in the sun a whole lot, just because the repercussions for me - I feel it, I go very red.
I always laugh to myself when I listen to some really big A-list star saying that they are just a normal person.
I enjoy learning about different periods and people, and then taking what's universal about the human condition and seeing where it matches up. No matter where you are, certain things unite everybody.
I've seen the greatest actors in the world, transcendent talents, who can't find a home.
You know when someone's over-flattering you in a way. You smile but you can't believe it.
I tend to make low-budget movies but, yeah, I make more money than I ever thought I would make.
I'm profoundly lucky. I really like it. I really like my work. I've liked it since I was 5 years old.
I had learning disabilities, and I couldn't express myself in the written word.
Traits like humility, courage, and empathy are easily overlooked - but it's immensely important to find them in your closest relationships.
Courtroom dramas can be boring.
Comedy is a way to make sense of chaos. It's a way of dealing with things that are overwhelming, that threaten you; it's a way to survive and get closer to the truth.
The goal seems to me at times just to be business first.
I just have to concentrate on doing what I do.
I find the whole disdain for ageing crazy.
It's always nice when you do something and it's well received as opposed to the other way which God knows happens to everybody. When the good times come around, you take a deep breath, appreciate it, but not take it too seriously.
My experience is that's rare - that you have a script that is... what they call 'film-ready.'
The thing about death is that it's honest.
If there's one thing that I've done on purpose it's to take whatever job, so long as it's interesting and challenging, whether it's theatre, radio, TV or film.
I could have gone to the gym for three hours a day and bought into all that, but I just wasn't interested.
With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.
I have a bag with a toothbrush and toothpaste and all the things I might need during the day. I call the bag my trailer. Sometimes you don't have a trailer, so that's my trailer.
I hope that anyone I worked with wouldn't exploit our relationship.
For me to have the opportunity to stay with one character for, God willing, a long period of time, is really exciting.
I don't consider myself a celebrity and I don't consider myself a star.
It's very hard to put forth a film that's about love and the joy of love and for it not to be patronising and not make people nauseous or make them roll their eyes.
I'm noise-sensitive. It's always better for me if things are quiet, so I can concentrate.
I love to work in all sorts of different situations.
